Room for Change: Cookware That Can Take the Heat

In the years following the Second World War, the world marveled when Teflon pans hit the shelves, granting us the pleasure of frying an omelet and sliding it seamlessly from an ungreased pan onto our plate. We fell hard for the ads that promised us that, with Teflon, we could cook “more healthfully than ever,” that cleanup was “magic.” And our infatuation remains — we continue to purchase Teflon-coated pans more than any others, according to Grandview Research, a consumer research company.The Atlantic confirms that 70% of the skillets soldin the United States are nonstick.

Interestingly, those ads didn’t hide what Teflon really was. As a spokesperson for the DuPont Company told a TV audience in a 1955 ad, “Teflon is really a tough guy among plastics.” 

Hmmm … plastics. 

The Graduate might have persuaded a generation that plastics were a great place to park our money, but cooking our food in them “is a terrible idea,” Anne-Marie Bonneau tells me when I reach her at her home in Northern California. She has created a following via her Zero-Waste Chef newsletter and cookbooks, where she shares advice and stories about reducing waste in our homes while cooking healthfully and deliciously. 

It’s hard to disagree with her, given how much more we know now about the impacts of plastic on our bodies and our environment than we did when Teflon coatings appeared on consumer products in the 1950s. Bluedot Marketplace editor Elizabeth Weinstein undertook an analysis of cookware, noting that, “Teflon, that incredibly handy nonstick material, is a perfluoroalkyl substance, or PFAS — a forever chemical.” According to The Atlantic, there aren’t conclusive studies that show Teflon to be harmful, but we do know that exposure to these forever chemicals is linked to certain cancers, reproductive issues, and high cholesterol. Mother Jones recently reported that, “Teflon … gets its nonstick properties from a toxic, nearly indestructible chemical called PFOA, or perfluorooctanoic acid … a likely human carcinogen, according to a science panel commissioned by the Environmental Protection Agency.” 

“And why cook with something that can kill your pet birds?” Anne-Marie Bonneau demands. “Overheating or burning a PFTE [Teflon] pan releases colorless, odorless, toxic particles and gases that can cause sudden death in nearby pet birds,” she explains (offering a link to the evidence). “Even when used as recommended, the pans can poison pet birds.” (The idiom “canary in a coal mine” springs to mind here.)

The Teflon company website warns us that, if you heat an empty Teflon-coated pan to over 348°F — just two degrees below the smoke point of butter — “the coating begins to deteriorate.” As Elizabeth Weinstein reports, “that deterioration can transfer chemicals into our air and our food. And who among us hasn’t accidentally burned something or set off the smoke alarm? Not I.”

What’s more, as four-time James Beard Award–winning chef Andrew Zimmern said in an op-ed for The New York Times: “I understand the appeal of nonstick pans with PFAS for their price and seeming simplicity. Here’s the thing: Those pans aren’t even that good for cooking. For most of the foods we make at home — seared meats, sautéed vegetables, fried rice, pancakes — a well-seasoned carbon steel or cast-iron pan performs better. Those omelets everyone points to as the sacred domain of nonstick cookware? French chefs perfected them long before the chemical coating was invented. The technique is what matters; gentle heat, a whisper of butter or oil and a patient wrist are what ensure results. Not a chemical barrier.”

But there’s good news, which Zimmern summed up in the title of his op-ed: Relax America, There Is Life After Nonstick Pans. Anne-Marie Bonneau agrees: “There’re so many alternatives, and I think cooking with the alternatives, the food tastes better, makes you a better cook.”

So, with our continued (and seemingly endless) goal of ridding our homes of harmful plastics, let’s consider those alternatives, the ones that make food taste better, that make us better cooks, that render our bodies, even if just slightly, less full of microplastics.

Cast Iron

Almost 30 years ago, my husband and I bought a small cottage perched atop a cliff overlooking one of the Great Lakes. It came fully furnished, as if the owners had one day simply pushed in their kitchen chairs, walked out the door, and vanished. Among the board games and pillowcases and framed pictures on the walls was something that, to me, was worth the entire price: a perfectly seasoned cast-iron frying pan that I still have, though we sold the cottage (completely furnished sans one cast-iron skillet) in 1999.

Anne-Marie Bonneau shares my love, though she acknowledges that “a lot of people are intimidated by cast iron.” Part of the problem is that many of us have been told that if a single soapsud gets within a foot of a cast-iron pan, the pan’s carefully created seasoning (which makes it nonstick) will be ruined forever. This, according to a Lodge spokesperson I chatted with years ago, is laughable. Even the most rusted, seemingly ruined cast-iron pans can be resurrected to their former glory, he insisted, a relatively easy process he had witnessed many times. And one that Anne-Marie enacted a few months ago when her daughter showed up with a rusted cast-iron skillet and a simple plea to “please fix my pan.”

Anne-Marie got to work using coarse salt and a cloth. She scrubbed much of the rust off, then rubbed a bit of oil on it, wiping off any excess, put it in a 450°F oven for about 15 minutes, and voilà: a restored cast-iron pan. (Serious Eats offers step-by-step instructions, including advice on which oil to use, and recommends 30 minutes in the oven.) Can your Teflon pan do that? As Anne-Marie put it in her newsletter roundup on nonstick options, “we do not bequeath our Teflon pans to our kids like we would a cast-iron.”

I love that my cast-iron pan works perfectly wherever it’s deployed: on my barbecue (fish, potatoes, veggies), in my oven, and on my stovetop, including the induction cooktop I’m using now. (Why induction? Because it’s incredibly fast and energy-efficient, provides an even heat, and doesn’t poison my indoor air like gas.) How does one wash a cast-iron pot or pan? Warm water and, when necessary, coarse salt. Simple. Effective. Cheap.

Cast iron is heavy, there’s no way around that. I just call it a workout and skip the gym, but its weight is one of cast iron’s attributes that steers people toward other alternatives.

A subcategory is an enameled cast-iron pan (think of the legendary Le Creuset and its ilk). Enameled cast iron doesn’t require seasoning, thanks to its smooth surface. Don’t use metal utensils, however, or you can chip the enamel.

Stainless Steel

After centuries of cooking with ceramics, the Bronze Age ushered in a new era of cooking with metal, though stainless steel is a relatively recent addition to our cookware menu. It’s lighter than cast iron (though less durable) and requires some sort of oil to make it nonstick. (Does the word “oil” scare you? Read this.) According to Andrew Zimmern, “stainless-steel skillets are in restaurant kitchens across America.” Both Anne-Marie and I stick to our stainless-steel pots and pans for acidic foods (tomato sauce, for example, or anything with lemon in it), which can both break down the seasoning in a cast-iron or, with prolonged use, impart a somewhat metallic taste to it (not harmful but also … not pleasant).

Anne-Marie’s advice is to purchase good quality, multi-layered stainless-steel pans, which she says make for even heating. She cleans her stainless steel with baking soda, which, she says, not only cuts through the grease but leaves the pans shiny. “Sprinkle it on, scrub the surface with a wet loofah or sponge, and rinse,” she recommends.

Carbon Steel

While carbon steel looks closer to stainless steel than cast iron, it has more in common with the latter. According to Zimmern, “a good carbon-steel pan improves with time, and it doesn’t scratch the moment you use a metal spatula on it.” I confess I’m unfamiliar with carbon steel, as is Anne-Marie (both of us having declared our allegiance to cast iron). The editors of Serious Eats, being fans of carbon steel, cite its advantages: “thinner, lighter, and more responsive to changes in temperature.” They note that carbon steel also requires seasoning and, like cast iron, can be used on gas, electric, and induction cooktops, as well as on open fire. “Another major draw of carbon-steel skillets is their durability,” they report. “These pans can withstand super-high temperatures for hours and transfer seamlessly from stovetop to oven. The only thing carbon-steel pans can’t do is handle acidic sauces for long periods, as this will eat away at their seasoning (same as cast iron).” In other words, they sound like … cast-irons without the heft.

Copper

The closest I’ve come to copper pans is admiring those that hang from hooks in the kitchens of fancy homes in upscale magazines. However, it’s worth including copper even if it’s only of interest or relevance to those of you with money to burn … or perhaps sauté. 

Serious Eats sums it up thusly: “It’s flashy, it’s fast, and it doesn’t come cheap.” It also has a long-lived pedigree among humans, the magazine tells us, noting that the early Romans were using it to cook. It’s the opposite of cast iron, which heats up slowly but holds onto its heat. Copper, Serious Eats tell us, “heats quickly and evenly, but it loses that heat just as fast.” The advantage of this is “a nimbleness and agility that can be very useful for delicate proteins like fish and seafood, as well as sauces, caramel, and chocolate — remove a copper saucepan holding a delicate sauce from the heat and its temperature will drop rapidly, reducing the chances the sauce overcooks or breaks from exposure to the retained heat in the metal.” Only you can decide if copper’s advantages are worth its price tag, which starts at about $250 for a saucepan and goes up from there. To help inform your choice, let’s note that, in the 1988 Oxford Symposium on Food & Cookery, author (and cookware investigator) Chuck Lemme concluded that, while the “perfect” — according to his assessment — cooking vessel doesn’t exist, cast iron scored highest, stainless steel came in second, and copper scored bronze. 

Whatever alternative you ultimately choose, know that you’ll be doing your part to eliminate the chemical that got its start in the building of the atom bomb (no kidding) from your kitchen and your body. And your pet bird will thank you.